I spent most of my life suffering. In anguish, twisting in the wind
because my parents hadn't loved me, had hated me with fearsome effect.
Going around like the hollow half shell of a walnut or an open hand,
wanting that drop of sacred water that other people had been given and
I had not.
I could tell of things my parents did, true and terrible stories that
people could hardly hear.

And it seemed to explain everything. I was an abuse survivor, feeling
over and over the pain, and maybe if I screamed long enough or devotedly
or honestly enough explored the past, I would be free of it and
free to be happy. I spent many years in therapy, but all it did was to
teach me to act differently. I still felt the same inside.

So it was mind-wrecking. In a nice way. When I found out - at 43!!!
that I had allergies to gluten and many other
foods.
And that my past
and my life and my personality were
different
once I stopped eating the foods I'd developed allergies to. The abuse
was no longer so overwhelming.

So listen: if you have an explanation for something; even if it
explains things well, even if it satisfies your heart and it's embedded
into your life as
truth, that doesn't mean it's THE explanation. Life is bigger than
our minds.

I was also
sick for six weeks a year after I
was 20. I would come down sick, like I had
the flu, but I didn't have a fever. Sick in bed, sleeping. Or not
in bed, but feeling like night had settled on my brain: my thoughts
plodding along, one after another like prisoners marching. I would be
so tired after
walking
across my apartment that I'd have to lie down. I stayed sick
about a week. I went
to doctors for 5 years looking
for help, but found none.
That heavy sickness went away after I quit the foods I'd become allergic to.

But several years later, I came down sick again, with a chronic bleary feeling. Mentally and physically, I had very little energy. It
went on for years. It turned out to be an inhalant hypersensitivity that isn't a conventional allergy!

You can be disabled by inhalant allergies even if allergy tests are negative.

From the time I was 20, I had adrenaline-like reactions
to carbohydrates, and
I would get hunger pangs from eating certain foods. That went away in 2005,
after I'd eliminated more foods I was allergic to.

My knee got injured in a skiing accident in 1987, and I could only run a
little, uphill, every other day. Otherwise my knee would hurt
afterwards.
Once I went to a park with my dog. I had a great time, running up hills
for hours ... With a feeling of Whee! Then I went home and my knee hurt
for a Month.
After the elimination diet in 2005, I
was able to run every day, as far as I wanted to, without my knee hurting.

In my search for health, I tried to eat very
healthy and although it didn't make me well, I think those
ideas are good.